Flash Larry may donate $115m to Harvard

Oracle founder Larry Ellison is reportedly on the verge of making the largest ever donation to Harvard University with a rumoured $115m gift said to be in the pipeline.

It is believed the donation will come from the Ellison Medical Foundation and will include funding for a global health monitoring centre as well as five new professorships.

A spokeswoman for Harvard, quoted in The San Francisco Chronicle, confirmed reports Ellison is in talks with the Ivy League institution but declined to comment on specific figures or on how any donation from Ellison will be spent.

It goes without saying the mooted global health monitoring centre would not be short of database software, and late last year Ellison gave advanced warning of just such a deal during an interview with the Chronicle.

"There's going to be a big announcement with Harvard very soon about a large database and journal we're starting, basically assessing how government and private foundations do in measuring improvements to world health," Ellison told the Chronicle.

Ellison is one of many tech tycoons known for large scale philanthropy. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, for example, has donated around $7.5bn to charity since 2000, while Intel founder Gordon Moore donated $600m to his alma mater, Caltech, in 2001.

But Ellison is keen that philanthropy not be measured in purely numerical terms.

"We measure philanthropy the wrong way," Ellison told the Chronicle. "We measure the input - how much someone gives. It's better to measure how many lives we save."

Ellison's personal fortune, according to Forbes, is believed to be around $18.4bn. In 1990 Ellison was awarded Entrepreneur of the Year by Harvard Business School.

The donation, which follows Ellison's sixtieth birthday, may be seen as the maturing of the Oracle boss who has previously been as famous for his outspokenness and his playboy lifestyle as he has been for his unquestioned business credentials.